RAIN 2023 killed my Domane’s rear wheel.
To be precise, it was the 70 or so miles of riding in the rain on RAIN that contributed to its final demise. That and the 20,000 or so miles over 10 years I have owned my Trek Domane 2.3.
The wheel finished RAIN without incident, and it was not a catastrophic or dramatic failure. Upon arriving home, I cleaned up the accumulated road grime, lubed the chain and it appeared ready to go. A few days later I drove to my weekly club ride, unloaded my bike and rode over from the parking lot to the group starting area, and that is when I heard the noise. The sound that was a cross between a tin popcorn popper and running clothes dryer filled with pocket full of quarters.
I decided I had better do a quick warm up loop to figure what was going on, and the noise only got worse. Any hard pressure on the pedals, and the rear hub amped up the complaining. I started out with my usual group, but the noise seemed to get even worse as I accelerated out into the road, and then tried to match pace with the group. After just a mile, I dropped off the back and took stock. It was not something I could adjust away, but I was able to ride with an easy pace, so opted to finish a solo ride before driving home. The noise was tolerable as long as kept my pedal pressure and pace down. (Not a bad idea for the week after RAIN, in any case.)
Back at home, I put the bike in my repair stand and removed the rear wheel. The cassette had over an 1/8” of movement side to side. As best I can determine, the rain on RAIN had washed out all the lube, and most likely one of the free-hubs internal bearing races had failed or was permanently worn. So I began to weigh my options for getting back to a quiet bike.
This wheel was already on a short count before RAIN, as I had found cracks forming around a couple of the eyelets in the rim. The rim was not deformed, but it was only a matter of time. So now had a wheel with a bad rim and a bad freehub. When you figure the cost of the rim, freehub, the spokes to rebuild (and time to find the parts and rebuild the wheel), it was looking like a couple of hundred dollars and a month of downtime. This was further complicated by my not having a spare rear wheel for the Domane.
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| My rack for spare tires, wheels & etc. |
It wasn’t always that way. By the time I had my second road bike, and for the next 30+ years of riding that followed, I had multiple sets of wheels that I shared and moved between bikes. I had narrow rims for sport riding, a set of touring rims with wider tires, and a few early cassette hubs (pre-10 speed). These all easily interchanged between the 3-4 bikes the bikes I acquired during the late 70’s and early 80’s, and hung onto until just a few years ago. Many of those were also Freewheel rather than cassette hubs as well; technology that was rapidly evolved away from starting in the early 90’s.
And also during those first few years (decades, to be precise) of riding, wheels were readily interchangeable between my bikes. So up until about the early 2000’s, I went through a half dozen different bikes using the same 4-5 pairs of wheels.
Swapping wheels meant a set of wheels was never on a bike that long, and if there was a problem, a wheel swap just took a few minutes. But this wasn’t the case for my Domane. That rear wheel only came off for flats and new tires. Riding quality tires, that meant the rear wheel might not come off for full season or longer, since I was easily getting 4,000 miles or more out a pair of Continentals. (Yes, I should have been doing a better job or routine maintenance, but that is another story.)
And my newer bikes make when swaps even more unlikely. Between my Trek 920 (2017) and my newest gravel bike, I have two different thru axle standards from Trek/Bontrager and Shimano. Don’t get me wrong, I love thru axle tech (and disc brakes, offset rims and other improvements), but it just means that unless you have a pro team support budget, you aren’t likely to have an extra pair of wheels for multiple bikes.
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| Maybe 5,000 more miles, or maybe not. |
To put the Domane back on the road quickly, I found a set of Shimano stock wheels, complete with a new free hub. With the rapid adoption of disc brakes, finding a set of rim brake compatible, standard quick release wheels in stock actually took some shopping around . And though I wouldn’t have minded building my own, the factory built wheels, with a mid-line Shimano hub, was less expensive than hand building a rear wheel only. The original rear wheel is probably headed for the recycle bin, and the front will just be on garage wheel rack for whatever.
The new wheels, with a fresh set of tires, dropped right in, needing just a few tweaks to the brakes for the slightly wider rims. The spoke tension was spot on, and there were no pings of seating spokes on the first ride. So after just a couple of weekends of downtime, I was back on road, hearing only the metal-on-metal whisper of the chain and the pleasing buzz of Conti’s on pavement, knowing my Domane was ready for another season, or 10.
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